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“Good artists copy, great artists steal.”

As a student learning CSS and Photoshop (3-4 years experience), I am always salivating over websites that have that look and feel that I love. A recent website has definetly caught my attention. The website is street-fashion . net and I would love if someone could please just give me a few pointers on how to effectively copy this design. Even if you told me exactly how and I had to do research to get the tools, thats more than helpful. I have Dreamweaver MX and Photoshop / GIMP / Fireworks. I have 4-5 years experience with photoshop, so doing the layout should (i hope)be a fly. If its only image splicing and linking that should be okay. The hard part is the html and css. If anyone would like to give me a list of things that I need / applications to be an effective stealer that would be super cool. THANKS !

Of course Datura is right steal is a no, no but inspiration, ideas, a new point of view from someone else's work is ok.
I must say your choice of thread title is controversial particularly on a website forum for web professionals who as you can understand are very sensitive about such a topic.

Yes the drop shadow on a background pic can look very nice and you'd with yours add a background div to your html and the link to your own image in the css.

Well, I basically reject the idea of copying somebody else's work. Period. It is unethical really to do so. Not to mention a copyrights violation

Agree You cannot find fulfillment in what you do if you just copied it from somebody who consumed blood and sweat just to come-up with his prized design. Make your own and I'm sure you'll be proud of it.

The phrase "Good artists copy, great artists steal" is misused. Don't copy (or steal) one site without any understanding or talent.

Stealing means internalizing great design to the point you can develop original design ideas which intelligently integrate dozens of elements from many sites.

“What Picasso did mean was that great artists rummage through the great junk heap of lost, bypassed, and forgotten ideas to find the rare jewels, and then incorporate such languishing gems into their own personal artistic legacy… Picasso implied that great artists don't get caught stealing because what they appropriate they transform so thoroughly into their own persona, that everyone ends up thinking the great idea was theirs in the first place.”
-- Good Designers Copy, Great Designers Steal

Poor artists deliberately misunderstand the meaning. Poor designers will be drawn to flashy gimmicks like a fish drawn to a hook. What gets copied is clich&#233; and fad.

Monkey-see monkey-do will never produce good design. Neither will image slicing without a lick of insight about CSS ...but that's another thread.

Guys come on chill a little, I completing agree with you that steal/copying is bad.

But shooting people down just for a poor choice of words how do you know that english isn't their first language and it was a poor choice of words.

Maybe it's isn't, maybe patientprincess is into stealing designs, but I for one aren't going to judge a book by it's cover and at least with the limited knowledge I have answer the question of how this effect is done.

Some of you are just being plan rude, and I can understand how often you web pro get stuff nick by hacks and had you hard work rob from you.

Sitepoint used to be a friendly place seem since I've been gone it's changed a bit.

…but I for one aren't going to judge a book by it's cover and at least with the limited knowledge I have answer the question of how this effect is done.

The old phrase of the book cover is used often in defense by misguided niceness I would never help a person who likes to cheat/steal. My personal principles do not allow me to do so. And as you well know Catherine, I am very generous with giving what I know to people.

Originally Posted by ozone88

Some of you are just being plan rude, and I can understand how often you web pro get stuff nick by hacks and had you hard work rob from you.

I would not call it rude when somebody adheres to principles that will not support theft

---------------------------

There is in this world today the attitude that you can just take what does not belong to you. It is so very easy to just ignore the intellectual property rights because in most people's minds property seems only a physical thing.

I think that we are all smart enough to read the comments as it should.

To add a bit more fuel to the discussion I would like to say that I do love to copy... for learning purposes!

What did you think? that I took someone else's design and made it pass as mine? You all have such a dirty minds!

PS: If it is a learning task, I think that it is ok to answer the question. It is great to experiment with a site that you already know how it looks in the end and try to accomplish the same look with your own code, and even improve the quality of the code.

Personally, I don't like the site but I would suggest to use Firefox Developer Extension and the Tools > Page Information to learn how the page was created.

Of course, taking into account that you can only guess how it was done by looking the CSS, the HTML and the Page information. You will be never be able to know for sure the server side code.

Thats funny you think it is the phrase that is offensive. So if you murder someone, saying you just "erased" them makes it better?

Jokes aside. Inspiration from other websites is fine, in fact all designers get inspired by other people's work, the line between being inspired and stealing is hard to define, but you as the designer will know because of how you feel. If you feel pride -then you probably did some real design work. Plain stealing other people's work is a bad idea for an obvious huge list of reasons.

I have never heard the phrase "Good artists copy, great artists steal." It does not make sense to me. It is true that art and culture grows and through generations of inspiration, artists learn from eachothers work, but that phrase does not say anything like that, in fact I consider myself an artist and I find that phrase meaningless and insulting and stupid. Call me crazy if you want to.

I have heard a lot of stupid quotes.... I heard my tv recently say something like "einstein once said -if an idea does not at first sound ridiculous, it will never be succesful." I don't know if he really said that or not, but even if he did, it makes no sense. It is stupid and illogical, if he said it -he must have been smoking opium that day. Even genius's say stupid things sometimes.

After reading the first few lines of that Good Designers Copy, Great Designers Steal article, I think that is pretty stupid too. How can you steal from yourself? It is called recycling your own work. Stupid title for that article.

Being inspired from something is completley different from stealing it. All that phrase does is encourage idiots to actually "steal." So stop saying artists are all theifs because we are not.

Perhaps a better way of putting things is "stealing up" and "stealing down."

Neither Apple nor Microsoft originate their designs. The difference is Apple steals up and Microsoft steals down. Apple takes everything to the next level, highly integrating and improving upon what it finds from others. Microsoft offerings often come off like a dog's breakfast -- a haphazard mishmash.